Steele lost his mother also in his childhood. He had an uncle, Henry Gascoigne, who, like Swift's uncle, provided for his education, but more generously. Attached to "Erin's high Ormonde," Gascoigne obtained for Steele a nomination to Charterhouse (1684) (Thackeray's school), where Steele met Addison, and their friendship began. In 1689 Steele went up to Christ Church, Addison being at Magdalen; in 1691 Steele gained a "postmastership" (a scholarship) at Merton, a college to which he was warmly attached, presenting its ancient library with the volumes of "The Tatler". He left just before his Schools (that is his examination for a degree). In 1694 he entered the Duke of Ormonde's Guards as a trooper, apparently gentlemen did this as a way of approaching a commission. Steele got his as a reward for a poem on the death of Queen Mary—the piece was dedicated to Lord Cutts, Colonel of the Coldstreams. He befriended Steele, who, stationed at the Tower, made the acquaintance of Congreve and the wits, and defeated Captain Kelly in a duel. Probably the contrast between the delicacy of Steele's sentiments, and his vein of sincere piety, on one hand, with his addiction to mundane pleasures, on the other, made him as notable in his regiment as Aramis, Abbé d'Herblay, among the Musketeers of Louis XIV.
Steele, when once he took a pen in his hand, wrote much against duelling, exposing the ludicrousness of the institution. His remarks had no effect; what killed the duel in England was the use of the pistol: unromantic, fatal, and fortuitous. His duel may have made men more wary of bantering Steele, but his "Christian Hero," a work of military devotion (1701) lowered his character in the regiment. To restore it he wrote his comedy "The Funeral" (1701); to show that blasphemy and intrigue were no necessary components of a play: for he was wholly of the party of Jeremy Collier. The idea of the plot, the revival of Lord Brampton while his coffin is waiting for him, and his watching of the manœuvres of his hateful widow, while his fair ward, Lady Sharlot, escapes in the coffin from her enemies (a common situation in ancient ballads) is too grotesque. But the scenes with the hired mutes, with the poor broken soldiers, with Lady Brampton and her maid, are very amusing. Steele's exposure of the low tricks of lawyers, his appeal for cheap and accessible justice for all, are much in, Dickens's manner, and the loves of Lord Hardy and Lady Sharlot are as pure as bonny Kilmeny, while Lady Sharlot, in her encounter with Lady Brampton, gives proof of high spirit, and Lady Harriet is a flirt as harmless as lively.
Like the other wits, Steele was presented with lucrative posts, such as the editorship of the colourless official "Gazette". In the same year, 1707, he married his second wife, Miss Scurlock, the adored Prue, a woman of some property. He had a house at Hampton Wick, horses, gardeners, footmen, everything handsome about him. In 1709 he founded "The Tatler," a folio sheet of printed matter, appearing thrice a week and containing news, political and social, correspondence, and the charming essays which soon became most important. Steele wrote 188 of these papers, Addison, forty-two, in thirty-six both men took a hand. Swift wrote very seldom. The essays, with those which he wrote in "The Spectator," and in other papers, are the foundation of the fame of Steele. They vary much in theme and style. To digest the "Iliad" into a journal, and reckon up the days of the events, cannot have much amused the public. There is plenty of dramatic criticism. Steele openly avows that he is a member of the Society for the Reformation of Manners; blames the plays of Wycherley and the rest, and calls in the name of Virtue for frequent representations of Shakespeare. "The apt use of the theatre is the most agreeable and easy way of making a polite and moral gentry, which would end in making the rest of the people regular in their behaviour," a pleasing opinion which is not quite justified by experience.
Dick was a constant patron of the best plays, but regular his behaviour was not. Various, excellent, and amiable as are Steele's essays, neither in style nor in thought do they wear quite so well as Addison's. Yet it is scarcely just to draw a distinction which may rest only on individual taste.
"The Tatler's" last appearance was on 2 January, 1711. Steele ended with a paper in which he generously attributes to his friend the essays which he deemed of most value. On 1 March the first number of "The Spectator" appeared—it ceased to exist on 6 December, 1712. Steele's new journal, "The Guardian," lasted for six months in 1713; he was elected as member for Stockbridge, and then came a quarrel of Whig and Tory with Swift, who wrote in "The Examiner". The arrival of George I from Hanover procured various lucrative posts, a patent for a theatre, and a knighthood for Steele: he edited "The Englishman," and attacked Swift's fallen friends, Harley and St. John; and in 1716 he got an income of £1000 a year as one of the commissioners of the estates forfeited by the Scottish Jacobites who were out for their King in the rising of 1715. This was not a pleasant appointment to a man of feeling. Of the coolness between Steele and Addison we speak elsewhere.
In 1722 Steele's "Conscious Lovers," with another attack on duelling was acted with success, and dedicated to the "gracious and amiable sovereign," George I. Cibber the actor added scenes rather more gay than the rest, for so moral is this drama that Fielding's Parson Adams, in "Joseph Andrews," said "it contains some things almost solemn enough for a sermon". His connexion with the theatre brought Steele into more than one lawsuit; his failing health, and the assiduities of his creditors caused him to prefer to reside in Wales; he died in Carmarthen on I September, 1729. Like Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, Walton, and Scott, he has made all his readers his friends, and if his plays are not acted much, the Lydia Languish of Sheridan, and the Tony Lumpkin of Goldsmith, are reflections from his Biddy and Humphrey in "The Tender Husband," a not successful comedy of 1705.
Addison.
There were few forms of literature, from the sacred hymn to the libretto of an opera, in which Addison did not adventure himself with success more than respectable. It is, however, as an essayist that he survives, and is read and admired. Born on 1 May, 1672, he was the eldest son of the Rev. Lancelot Addison, who, after acting as chaplain to the garrisons of Dunkirk and, later, of Tangier, obtained the small living of Milston, married the sister of a bishop, and in 1683 received the Deanery of Lichfield. He was something of a Jacobite, and as an author had pleasing traits of humour and irony. His son Joseph passed through two local schools, and thence to Charterhouse (Thackeray's school) whence first to Queen's, then to Magdalen, Oxford, where he held a demyship (scholarship), and was later a Fellow.
"Addison's Walk" is in the little wood round which two branches of the Cherwell meander with a mazy motion. Addison was soon admired for the excellence of his Latin verses: he made Dryden's acquaintance, and complimented him in verse; he began a translation of Ovid for Tonson, in the usual ten-syllable rhyming couplets.
Some of the stories of the Metamorphoses remain, with notes of literary criticism, including a compliment to William III. "The smoothness of our English verse," he casually remarks, "is too much lost by the repetition of proper names," which, in fact, are sonorous ornaments of the verse of Milton, Scott, Tennyson, and others. But Addison, bent on "smoothness" had not yet come to appreciate Milton; still less, in his early "Account of the English Poets," Spenser, who